Sixth Marine Division

Stories by Others About the Sixth Division, the Marines, and World War II

Remembering Jack Magnuson (22nd Mar-1-A) and the Battle of Okinawa 75 Years Later

by his son-in-law, Paul Kirst, March 30, 2020

It is a cool, pleasant, sunny day in the woods of Wisconsin. My father-in-law, Jack Magnuson, is very much on my mind today. He has been gone for nearly nine years, taken after an eight-year battle with Alzheimer’s.

My personal journey to explore Jack’s Marine Corps experience began as I was writing the eulogy for his funeral. In it, I speculated that his World War II experience in the Pacific had played an important role in shaping the man he would become. Like many other combat veterans, Jack did not share much with his family about that part of his life, so I knew nothing about his service. I began a several-year exploration through books, articles, documentaries, military records, and personal letters to better understand the person he was.

I’m remembering Jack today because at this moment, 75 years ago, he was a 19-year-old Marine Pfc machine gunner aboard the USS Monrovia, a troop transport ship sitting in the East China Sea, awaiting the commencement of a different battle he would fight. The Monrovia was just one ship in a fleet of more than 1,500 vessels carrying 548,000 men of all arms assembled for Operation Iceberg, the invasion of the Island of Okinawa. On board the Monrovia at 04:45 on 31 March, Jack was likely asleep in a cramped, stacked bunk surrounded by his fellow 22nd Marine Regiment buddies.

Although Jack may have been at rest, in a little more than 24 hours he would be in an amphibious landing craft preparing to head onto the Hagushi Beaches. Today this beach, known as Toguchi Beach, is a beautiful tourist attraction with pristine sand beaches, comfy cabanas, inviting restaurants, and well stocked shops filled with people enjoying the comforts of modern life. On April 1, 1945, it was a wide stretch of white sand 20 or so yards deep backed with a solid rock sea wall fronting a landscape that had been blasted by the heaviest concentration of naval gunfire in history.

History records that it was a pleasant day, a balmy 75 degrees, with a gentle breeze out of the north-northeast that put gentle ripples in the water. Perfect weather for an amphibious landing. The cold spring rains that would soon make their lives miserable were a month or so away.

It was feared that behind the sea walls were thousands of Japanese troops ready to engage. The Marines probably knew something of the nightmarish scenes that had played out months earlier on the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima. Jack himself had fought on Guam nine months earlier, so he had firsthand experience of what might be waiting for him. What was Jack feeling and what was he thinking as he stood cramped, shoulder to shoulder, inside the LTV with its powerful engine roaring in his ears as it approached the beach?

As it turned out, there were only a few scattered Japanese troops at the beaches that day, not the thousands feared. The Marines were able to land, wade ashore, and proceed inland with little resistance from the veteran Japanese 32nd Army of 155,000 that they knew was on the island.

In a short letter Jack wrote to his mother dated April 15, 1945, with the censor’s stamp in its upper left corner, he penned:

Dear Mom & all

Just a line or two to let you know I am still all right.

As you know by now, we landed here April 1st – D-day – it was also Easter Sunday – I don’t think I need to tell you what was going thru my mind when we were coming into the beach in the assault boats.

The operation hasn’t been too bad this far – but it isn’t over yet. This is my second major operation.

How is everyone back home? I hope you are all fine. I hope I get home soon, but I know I can’t. I have 9 more months to spend out here before I can get back. How about sending me a couple of cans of cocoa – ? – .

See you soon --- .

Love, Jack

Jack T Magnuson (22nd Mar-1-A)

Jack was accurate in the letter when he said “…it isn’t over yet.” A day later and for the following three days, Jack’s 22nd Regiment, along with the 29th and 4th Regiments, encountered very heavy fighting as they cleared out the Japanese defenses concentrated on the thickly wooded Mount Yae-Dake in the North of Okinawa. In December 2018-January 2019, I visited the Island of Okinawa with my nephew, Dan, and his Okinawan wife, Shima. I saw Mount Yae-Dake and witnessed firsthand the incredibly thick jungle growth that surrounds and covers the mountain. When I was in my late 20s, I lived in the jungles of Eastern Bolivia, and even then, I never encountered such thick, dense jungle as I saw in the area around Mount Yae-Dake. I can’t imagine how grueling it must have been for those Marines as they fought their way up that heavily fortified mountain.

On May 2, 1945, Jack wrote to his family:

Dear Mom & all,

Just a few lines to let you know I am still O.K. Right now, we are having a few days rest before going back in the lines. We were on the go for 29 days with hardly a rest.

I got a letter from you yesterday, also one from Nelly and Dick McKnight. It sure was nice to get a few letters.

The fighting here isn’t really too bad – nothing like Iwo – the terrain is really rugged.

Hills, hills, and more hills. I could tell you a few things about the battle but you probably wouldn’t understand what I was trying to say anyhow. Besides the more you think about these things the worse they seem.

How is everyone at home? Is dad losing his ponch – HA! – I am always expecting a picture of you and him in one of your letters. Hope I get one soon. Well I will close now so say hello to all and I’ll write again soon.

Your son
Jack

It would be 6 weeks before Jack could write his mother again. The last letter home, dated May 19, 1945 and written on American Red Cross letterhead, was sent from a Navy field hospital on the Island of American Samoa.

In the two letters he wrote from Okinawa, Jack tried to reassure his mother that the fighting was not too bad. His reassurances were premature. The 6th Marine Division, along with the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions, were put into trucks and moved south to join the Army divisions that were already engaged in fierce fighting in the south of the island. The young Marines in the 6th learned the name of a place that would forever define how their Division would be remembered as a fighting unit…Sugar Loaf Hill.

Historians have argued that the fiercest and most brutal fighting experienced by any American military unit during World War II occurred during the Battle of Okinawa. A number of factors contributed to that opinion: extremely miserable weather conditions that turned the battlefield into a stinking, sucking quagmire; astoundingly unfavorable battlefield positions held by the Americans through the worst part of the fighting; nearly impregnable defensive positions held by the Japanese; and of course, the ferocious suicidal battlefield tactics practiced by Japanese soldiers during the 82-day battle. Some historians have also opined that the worst of the worst, the most ferocious of the most ferocious, was experienced by the 6th Division Marines during the week-long struggle to secure Sugar Loaf Hill.

The Japanese had a name that they gave to the newly formed 6th Marine Division – “The Young Tigers.” What these Young Tigers faced at Sugar Loaf Hill was, in reality, three hills: Sugar Loaf, The Horseshoe, and Half-Moon, each named after its shape. The three hills were in close proximity to each other and roughly formed a triangle, which allowed each hill to provide supporting fire to the others. Each was composed of concrete-hard coral. Each had secure caverns carved out deep inside them with many tunnels leading to the surface. The hills were interconnected by deep underground tunnels that allowed Japanese troops to shuttle back and forth among them, completely safe from artillery bombardment or small arms fire. They formed a single fortress impervious to naval or land artillery support fire and aerial bombardment. In addition, this fortress was connected by a deep, mile-and-a-half-long tunnel running to the Japanese main headquarters and supply base at Shuri Castle on the other side of the island. This allowed for safe resupply and reinforcement of the three hills.

Pictures taken during the battle show that the ground leading up to the three hills, which the Marines had to cross to reach them, was a denuded landscape that afforded no cover for the Marines as they advanced forward. Put simply, the Japanese had all the advantages, and the Americans had all the disadvantages. This accounted for the vicious struggle and punishing losses that the 6th experienced during the week-long battle.

Most books on the battle acknowledge that the 29th Regiment bore the brunt of the fighting at Sugar Loaf, but they also record how all three of the regiments totally exhausted themselves in the ferocious fighting. I scoured numerous books and articles to glean as much information as I could on what was happening with Jack’s unit – the 1st Battalion of the 22nd Regiment – during the fight for Sugar Loaf Hill. Jack was wounded on May 15th, and his unit was pulled off the line after what he described as a fight that “shattered” his Company. On the 50th anniversary of the April 1st landing, he described to his wife, Mary Louise, a fight that “nearly wiped out his Company,” a fight that left him as one of the last remaining machine gun crew members in the Company. Fortunately for my research, she wrote down notes of his brief comments that day. All I could find in all my other studies was a small mention of 1st Battalion coming under very heavy machine gun and artillery fire during an assault attempt on May 15.

Two days later, on May 17, Jack was flown to a naval hospital on American Samoa.

When I visited Okinawa a year and a half ago, I went to Sugar Loaf Hill several times hoping, I suppose, to catch some feeling of what the 6th Division Marines felt and experienced during that terrible week in May 1945.

Paul Kirst on Sugar Loaf Hill, 2019

The hill is now topped with a large, attractive water tower. The west side of the hill, where Jack’s unit fought, has a paved service road that winds to the top. The east side, where the men of the 29th Regiment repeatedly threw themselves against its barren slopes, is now graced by a finely-aged stone stairway that runs up to a small historical marker at the top. Inscribed on the marker in Japanese and English is a brief story of the battle, the only remaining evidence of the mighty struggle that took place there. Next to the historical marker is a small wooden observation tower that affords a view of the office buildings, luxury shopping malls, restaurants, and hotels that now surround the hill. Where there was once a blasted, barren no man’s land shrouded in death, there is now a vibrant city filled to the brim with life. The hill is no longer a place where men in arms struggle against each other. It is a place where high school couples go to hold hands and look out over their city.

As I said, I was looking for some feeling, some sense of what happened at Sugar Loaf Hill. I had studied long and hard concerning Jack’s experiences in the Marine Corps, and Sugar Loaf Hill was a huge, possibly defining event in his life. I had hoped I would sense something of the great struggle that had taken place at Sugar Loaf Hill. But I did not.

I was grateful for being able to visit the site, for sure. Ultimately what struck me deepest was how time had changed everything. As Jack himself often said, “Life goes on.” Life indeed had moved on. How very, very hard those Marines had fought and struggled to get up that hill, only to be repeatedly pushed back off. How unbelievably simple and easy it was for me to walk up a set of stone stairs to get up the same hill.

Seventy-five-years is a long time. The open- and closed-mouthed Shisa Dogs that grace many of the buildings in the modern city of Naha are meant to protect the homes and buildings from intruding “spirits.” The “spirits” of those who fought and died on Okinawa have long since gone. But the memory of the sacrifices they all made – all of them, American, Japanese, and Okinawan – should be honored and not forgotten.

During my visit there last year, what turned out to be one of my most memorable moments happened when I visited the Peace Memorial Garden on the far southern tip of Okinawa. It’s the location of a huge assemblage of black stone monuments, each monument containing the inscriptions of the names of all who died in the battle. Japanese, Okinawan, Korean, American, all who died – 250,000 names in total. I took a picture of a little Okinawan boy by the name of Now, the nephew of my niece-in-law Shima, pointing to a name inscribed in Japanese on one of the monuments.

Okinawan boy points to name of his great grandfather who was killed on Okinawa

It was the name of his Okinawan great-grandfather who had been a teacher before the war. At age 45 he was conscripted as a laborer for the Japanese army, and his family never saw him again. His then 4-year-old daughter survived the war to become Shima’s mother.

All of us who hold a special place in our hearts for the 6th Marine Division can take time, in our own way, to honor those Marines, especially those we love and loved, and honor those who they loved and left on that field of battle so long ago.

Paul Kirst and wife Deborah Magnuson, daughter of Jack Magnuson, at the 2019 Reunion in Philadelphia

Hagushi Beaches, Okinawa, October 1944 (from Naval History and Heritage Command)